Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

but she’d heard all the glory talk from their jealous kinfolk back home. But even if Chicago did sound close to God’s heaven, Annalaura knew that not even in that place could a white man live in the open with a black woman.
    Annalaura looked down at the sleeping baby. This little one would need more than Aunt Becky’s Cherokee medicine to spare her all the misery that life was going to throw at her. How could her little girl survive when she had a mother so overcome with worry that her milk was bound to taste worse than rancid butter. And her father? Didn’t Alex understand that white men who got too close to colored also got killed? There could be no running off to Chicago with a colored woman and a half-colored baby. The trees in Montgomery County had limbs on them marked for white as well as black. Dolly could be an orphan before the next sunset. Annalaura had to try again.
    “Their father…John…he’s gonna want the big boys. Ain’t no need to pay for their keep.” If she started to agree with him, he would soon see that his plan was impossible.
    “I don’t want Welles nowhere near any of the children.” Alex shook the bed with his shout. “Not Cleveland, not Doug, not you, not Dolly. I want his as…butt out of Lawnover.” He laid his arms around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. “Once spring plantin’ is over…Let’s just say Welles will be happier if he gets out of Lawnover sooner better than later.”
    Annalaura clenched her grip on Dolly. Her whole body started to shake. What could she do to make Alex understand that if he stirred up the white farmers over her—a colored woman, any colored woman—both he and John would be dead? John would be found hanging from the branch of an oak, and Alex would meet up with a runaway wagon.
    “I don’t want no trouble, Alex. Not fo’ John, not fo’ Miz McNaughton, not fo’ you.” She had tried almost everything.
    Her body and mind had little more to give. Careful of little Dolly, she twisted around and slipped her free arm around his shoulders. She leaned into him and pushed her tender breast into his chest. She readied herself against the pain and kissed him hard on the lips.
    “Alex, you gotta help me make this work.” She released his lips and looked into his eyes. “You gotta let me handle John. He ain’t gonna hurt me nor this baby. Without you doin’ a thing, John gonna light out of Lawnover before the week’s out.” She nuzzled her nose against his ear, raised her hand to his neck and stroked the side of his face. She watched his eyes. She had him captured in her gaze. “Let me have two days, just two days, and I promises you that I will bring Dolly to yo’ house. I’ll stay low ’til yo’ missus get used to us bein’ there. Just, please, darlin’, let me bring Henry and Lottie ’til I can find somebody good to take ’em in.” She kissed him again.
    Little Dolly, squeezed between the two, started to whimper.
    Alex leaned away from her and laid a hand on his daughter.
    “You’ll move in with me in two days and bring the baby?”
    Her time had run out. If this was the price she had to pay to keep alive the two men who had captured every feeling her heart ever held, then she would make the bargain.
    “I’ll do whatever you say and be glad for it. Just, no more talk ’bout John. He don’t want my face to give him reminders. He’ll be outta Lawnover in two days’ time.” She let her head fall back on his chest. She could fight no more.
    Alex kissed her forehead as he eased her back onto the pillow. He smoothed one of the rumpled blankets over her, bent down to kiss the top of Dolly’s head, and headed for the door. As he opened it to let in the first pale gray streaks of the new day, he turned and looked back at Annalaura.
    “I love you, Laurie. Thank you for the baby.” He was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
     
    The pink of the sky settled in and brushed away the last of the night. If the day was going to be hot, cool, or middling warm made no difference to John. If the newly turned earth scented the fields with wild primrose or mule dung was of little notice to him. Every thought in his head, every picture before his eyes, every sound in his ears, and every touch upon his skin was fixed upon the barn and the mid-forty. Last night had been no different.
    He had passed most of it sitting upright in the little lean-to right behind the colored Baptist church in Lawnover, hearing their voices and seeing their